We touchy Indians

As India ushers into a new age, celebrates its 60^th republic day I wondered as to how many of us actually understand the meaning of being in a “republic “country. We are a country that has a huge and varied population, coupled with apparent illiteracy. Such conditions are very effectively used by the power mongers to create situations of unrest and anarchy in various parts of the country, and why are they successful ? Because of our “touchy nature”

I was going through the news paper a few days back and read an article regarding such an issue. It gave my thoughts regarding these issues a stronger support. We are a people that does not just respect its leaders but give them the god status. Apparently this seems to be good, but it is these touchy sentiments that are being exploited. Such exaggerated love or devotion creates more problems then solutions.

I remember when the movie ‘Subhas Chandra Bose – forgotten hero’ was released there were a number of controversies that were created out of thin air. First people protested that he is not forgotten, secondly and most importantly people took to streets protesting over the fact that the movie actually told about his German wife. Ridiculous as it is, I don’t understand that how does a title ‘forgotten hero’ cause any harm. The most irritating part is why is it not possible for a national hero to have a German wife, can’t he fall in love or have an affair, after all he is a human being, but no—for us he is GOD.

This is not the only incident of this sort. The year was 2001,a respected historian published a book which said that Hindus did consume beef in ancient times and that in medieval times laws became stricter. When our ‘touchy’ public got to know this they burnt the books and Hyderabad civil court even banned it. Ultimately the book was published in America and England. In 2004 Sambhaji brigade, a Marathi youth wing vandalized a research center in pune because the centre had given access to an American writerto the various manuscripts of the time and he inferred that may be Shivaji’s family life might not have been very happy and that might have influenced his political views. These are not the only examples,in the year 2000 arun shourie;s book created a huge uproar as it questioned Dr B.R.Ambedksar, which angered the dalits. Same thing happened in Orissa because of some controversies regarding Bose.

It is one thing to love and respect your idols and another to create such hullabaloo. I wonder why is it not possible to let everyone speak his mind, after all its his opinion, its not like someone is standing on a podium and abusing your “demy gods”. Why cant we be a bit more liberal. Its high time that we understand that if we love or respect someone it must be true, from the heart. If your love and respect are so weak that a book or a movie can dilate it then I think it will be safe to conclude that all your respect was just a show, all you want is to be famous and become a overnight star. It is for educated people like us to make sure that these ideas don’t settle in our minds ,logic must always prevail over emotions in such cases, and tolerance is our gift to the world, yet we are so poor in showing it.

corrupt-education

Few days back as i was going through the news paper and I read about the decision taken by the Ministry of Human resource development to de-affiliate 44 deemed universities of their deemed status. I went through the list of institutes and the first thing that ran through my mind was 'do i have any friends studying in any of these institutes?'. Well thankfully the answer was no. But think about all those people who had either taken a degree from those institutes or those who are currently pursuing one. The very thought is scary, to say the least.

Picture this, lets say that each of these institutes were there for atleast 5 yrs, now each of the institutes mentioned in the list were technical or med schools so it will be fair to assume that they enrolled ATLEAST 250 students each. If we multiply these figures then atleast 55000 STUDENTS had to bear the brunt of a blind educational system.

This is a huge figure that stares at you and tells you how wrong the educational system has gone towards providing a fare and standard education. We are a country that boasts of being the next super power, a country that is constantly improving upon the role it plays in the international stage, if this is the sorry state of education the it should not be surprising if we do not achieve any of our goals as a country. I know that the first thing that comes to one’s mind is that we also have world class institutes like the famed IIT’S , the IIM’S etc, but we cannot turn our back to the fact that we do have huge loop holes in our system.

Let us ask this question, why did such a scenario occur in the first place. The answer is simple CORRUPTION. It is this plague that has engulfed every system and of course education. How did these institutes get the required clearances in the first place, is there no governing body that takes care of it? is there no governance of these bodies?. Well there are a lot of govt. bodies looking in these matters like AICTE, NBA … and the list continues. If this is so then how did these institutes get recognized? Well just as they say ‘money can buy everything’.. it bought education too. All these institutes are owned by big shots who literally ‘bought’ their way into this. Look at the city of Bangaluru this city alone houses more than 100 technical colleges, some deemed, some affiliated to various universities which are growing like mushroom these days. Apart from Bengaluru there are many such ‘education hubs’ all over the country. Their existence was possible only because of the callous and corrupt attitude of the government. So I think it would not be wrong to say that the government is actually cleaning its own mess, created long ago. Even after reputed institutes like SRM had come under the scanner in the past, it took our government around 3 yrs to initiate an action.

I know that it’s one thing to blog and a different thing to do give solutions, but I think the government and the media are doing very little if not nothing to spread awareness among the people. We even have ads saying”Jago grahak jago” but no ads to warn the students and their parents about the circus that education has today become. So I think we the educated masses must take or try to take a stand and do something about it. A small initiative can be seting up an ngo who works to spread awareness in this matter. Of course the govt has to step in but we can do our part.